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Burma: Local Sources of Support
August 05, 2009 | Megan Fowler | Tagged as: Burma
I arrived in Burma less than four months after Cylone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy delta region. The cyclone left 140,000 people dead or missing. Farms, villages and cities were flooded. Homes, schools and roads were destroyed. 2.4 million people have been affected.
In the initial days after the devastation, the Burmese people took it upon themselves to bring supplies into the delta and help the survivors. International aid organizations hired thousands of local Burmese to help them in their efforts to provide food, shelter and health care throughout the cyclone-affected regions. And after pressure from the UN and neighboring Asian countries, the government eventually lightened up restrictions on UN and international aid agencies who were trying to bring in foreign staff and supplies from outside the country. Today, hundreds of foreign aid workers are now providing assistance in the delta.
One Burmese man I met told me how he became inspired to help. Jerry (not his real name) told me that after the cyclone hit, many of his foreign customers began to send him concerned emails. They wanted to know if he was okay and how they could help. He set up a web site with information and people began to mail him money.
Although Jerry’s business had been battered, he started buying food and clothing and driving it into the delta. “I didn’t think it was dangerous,” he said. “My friends were offering to help. How could I not?”
But it was dangerous. A government official stopped him on one of his trips and tried to confiscate his goods. Jerry asked him in outrage, “What if this was your mother? Your children? Your family?” He shamed the officer, who let him go on with his goods. But in future trips he was more discreet and hid the supplies as he drove them down.
After a family member was interrogated by the military about Jerry’s work, his mother became very nervous that the government might start targeting their family. It didn’t happen. He is continuing to distribute food and supplies to people in the delta until his money runs out in the next few weeks.
Jerry was glad that we had arrived in Burma. “We need people to visit here,” he said at the end of our conversation. “If you don’t come, the government can only continue to conceal what happens here.”
An aid worker in Rangoon told me that he had heard dozens of similar stories like Jerry’s. Indeed, George Packer noted in this week’s New Yorker that one month after the cyclone, everyone he met “was collecting relief supplies for the delta.”
These stories highlight Burma’s growing civil society and a people that have learned to fend for themselves against the odds. However, in the next few months the U.S. government is likely to revert to policies that give little support to those who suffer under the military regime. While the U.S. government generously provided millions of dollars of assistance for cyclone survivors, this funding will soon end.
Before Cyclone Nargis, Burma was already one of the poorest countries in the world, but foreign governments were providing less than $3 per person in aid annually. The U.S. government’s efforts to punish and isolate the Burmese junta are also punishing and isolating the Burmese people. Jerry’s story should instead remind us that there is much to support inside Burma without supporting the regime.
--Megan Fowler
In the initial days after the devastation, the Burmese people took it upon themselves to bring supplies into the delta and help the survivors. International aid organizations hired thousands of local Burmese to help them in their efforts to provide food, shelter and health care throughout the cyclone-affected regions. And after pressure from the UN and neighboring Asian countries, the government eventually lightened up restrictions on UN and international aid agencies who were trying to bring in foreign staff and supplies from outside the country. Today, hundreds of foreign aid workers are now providing assistance in the delta.
One Burmese man I met told me how he became inspired to help. Jerry (not his real name) told me that after the cyclone hit, many of his foreign customers began to send him concerned emails. They wanted to know if he was okay and how they could help. He set up a web site with information and people began to mail him money.
Although Jerry’s business had been battered, he started buying food and clothing and driving it into the delta. “I didn’t think it was dangerous,” he said. “My friends were offering to help. How could I not?”
But it was dangerous. A government official stopped him on one of his trips and tried to confiscate his goods. Jerry asked him in outrage, “What if this was your mother? Your children? Your family?” He shamed the officer, who let him go on with his goods. But in future trips he was more discreet and hid the supplies as he drove them down.
After a family member was interrogated by the military about Jerry’s work, his mother became very nervous that the government might start targeting their family. It didn’t happen. He is continuing to distribute food and supplies to people in the delta until his money runs out in the next few weeks.
Jerry was glad that we had arrived in Burma. “We need people to visit here,” he said at the end of our conversation. “If you don’t come, the government can only continue to conceal what happens here.”
An aid worker in Rangoon told me that he had heard dozens of similar stories like Jerry’s. Indeed, George Packer noted in this week’s New Yorker that one month after the cyclone, everyone he met “was collecting relief supplies for the delta.”
These stories highlight Burma’s growing civil society and a people that have learned to fend for themselves against the odds. However, in the next few months the U.S. government is likely to revert to policies that give little support to those who suffer under the military regime. While the U.S. government generously provided millions of dollars of assistance for cyclone survivors, this funding will soon end.
Before Cyclone Nargis, Burma was already one of the poorest countries in the world, but foreign governments were providing less than $3 per person in aid annually. The U.S. government’s efforts to punish and isolate the Burmese junta are also punishing and isolating the Burmese people. Jerry’s story should instead remind us that there is much to support inside Burma without supporting the regime.
--Megan Fowler
Labels: Burma
